Summary

One of the newest decks to break on the scene in Standard is W/U (or Mono-White) Monument. It takes advantage of Oketra’s Monument‘s ability to flood the board with small creatures. Most players, myself included, assumed that it was a flash in the pan, but it has stuck around with the release of Hour of Devastation. Modern players have started to take notice, and some are even trying to make it work in their format, and we’ll be looking at one such list today.

This deck is truly built around Oketra’s Monument. When paired with Whitemane Lion, you can continuously bounce the Lion and make a 1/1 for every 1 mana you want to spend. Similarly, one copy of Squadron Hawk, which has all but fallen out of favor in Modern, gives you access to 4 power in the air (Hawks) and 4 power on the ground (Monument) for only 4 mana.

In order to keep the party going, this deck plays Sky Hussar, but usually not for its 4/3 body. Instead, it uses the excess of tokens in play to draw more cards, which makes more tokens to keep ramping up production. The deck also plays 4 copies of Wall of Omens, which usually isn’t seen with the aggressive white creatures in the deck. However, it indicates the strategy of this deck the best. A 0/4 wall is great and holding the fort until the deck can get its powerful engines online.

Judge’s Familiar, Reflector Mage, and Spell Queller are all usually featured in aggressive or tempo-oriented decks, but that’s not the case here. In fact, each of them are actually used in a controlling context, looking to counter spells or bounce creatures to buy the deck time so it can produce its critical mass of creatures. Additionally, with the mana reduction from Oketra’s Monument, Reflector Mage and Spell Queller are happy to play the value game, as their already pushed mana costs become even cheaper.

Just like the Standard version, this deck takes advantage of the power of Dusk // Dawn, and uses it almost as a one-sided board wipe. While it’s not guaranteed to hit exactly what you want it to in every matchup, it does enough against the midrange decks and protects against sweepers enough that it warrants a spot. Similarly, Serum Visions is usually never found with these cheap white creautres, but the deck has a difficult time playing without Oketra’s Monument in play, so having some way of drawing to it is critical.